TRAIN > STUDENT LIFE
Student Life
More than a course load.
CanIL is a small, close community — people who study hard together, then go camping, share meals, and worship together. Here's what life looks like across the year.
In the summer
The summer term is CanIL at its most intensive and its most communal. Students and staff are encouraged to live in residence on the Trinity Western campus, where you can wake five minutes before class and still make it on time, then step out your door to find someone up for ping-pong, volleyball, or a late study session. Dorms have cooking facilities. Three times a week the whole community steps away from study for praise and reflection, with a weekly time in Scripture through guided reading. On Saturdays, on- and off-campus students gather for a hot brunch and good conversation. And each July, students, staff, and faculty camp together in the BC interior.
During the school year
Fall and spring run at a gentler pace than the summer intensive, but the community keeps its rhythm. Trinity Western and Tyndale Universities host chapels with engaging speakers and worship, and once a week, the CanIL community gathers on its own for a more familial time of worship and sharing. Monthly “M-Files” lunches bring alumni back to share field stories over a complimentary meal — equal parts inspiration and homecoming. And every few weeks, faculty, students, and visiting scholars present their latest work at the linguistics colloquia, so there's always something new to dig into.
Adventures in British Columbia
CanIL sits in the Fraser Valley, with mountains, rivers, ocean, skiing, and hiking all within an hour's drive, and hundreds of kilometres of trails within forty minutes. The community gets outside year-round — informal explorations, sports activities, camping and fishing in the surrounding valleys, and two organized day trips each summer, one to the mountains and one to the coast. Nearby, historic Fort Langley — the first European settlement in lower BC and a launching point for the 1850s Fraser River gold rush — is worth an afternoon. Summers are warm and dry, the winters are mild and green. Downtown Vancouver is about a 45-minute drive away.
